The spy who read me: authors under surveillance

ERNEST HEMINGWAY thought his phone was tapped. Doris Lessing reckoned that British spies were following her every move. Claude McKay suspected that the FBI was monitoring his travel in Europe. Their instincts were right. During the 20th century intelligence agencies in Britain and America spent countless hours investigating “dangerous” authors. This was in part an alternative to censoring or banning the work of troublesome writers, which dictatorships do more readily than democracies. The literary snooping eased up, though did not cease, after America won the cold war. Writing by novelists and essayists came to seem less dangerous and files on them became thinner.